As Nigerians Scale The Anambra Hurdle

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Published: February 9, 2010

Two questions have concentrated my mind since Saturday when Anambra State indigenes went to the poll to elect their Governor in the historic ballot that flagged off the era of staggered elections in Nigeria.

I have asked myself whether I am happy with the way things turned out. Secondly, I have also wondered whether the outcome is an indication that as a people we have turned the page in matters that have to do with elections.

My answer to the first question is an emphatic Yes. Many had predicted that there was going to be a bloodbath in Anambra, a state that has been wrongly stereotyped as an impossible and unruly one. Of course, it was obvious that nothing could be farther from the truth. Indigenes of Anambra State are peace loving. They were unfortunate that their state became the guinea pig that the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, used to experiment his characteristic brand of voodoo politics which he rightly, albeit cynically, christened “do-or-die politics.”

I am happy that despite all odds, Anambra people have finally reclaimed their soul and shamed their detractors. They have done this not necessarily because the incumbent Governor, Peter Obi, was re-elected. No! That is not the issue. Any of the candidates could have won. But the greatest thing Anambrarians achieved with this election is that for the first time, they elected a man of their choice as their Governor without any imposition from mischievous godfathers from outside.

Anambra people have made the Igbo proud once more and must hold their heads high. All those that have used the externally induced political crisis in the state as a dubious yardstick for measuring how unruly they claim the people that inhabit the land of the rising sun are must surely be having a rethink now.

But has Nigeria finally turned the page? I am not so convinced. Elections in Nigeria are still viewed from the prism of war. The fact that over 23,000 policemen were deployed in Anambra for the election, with the Inspector General of Police, Ogbonna Onovo, relocating to the state was scary. A Deputy Inspector General of Police also personally supervised the performance of the policemen on duty during the period. Helicopters and gunboats were deployed. As if that was not terrifying enough, soldiers were on standby on the outskirts of the city waiting for orders to move in. As usual, movement was restricted in the state on the day of election. Thus the state was effectively locked in, just because a governorship election was taking place.

Besides, in conducting the governorship election, the Commission deployed three Resident Electoral Commissioners from other states to join the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Anambra. No less than 5000 staff of the Commission and 4000 members of the National Youth Service Corps were also deployed from different states of the Federation for the assignment.

Agreed, nobody wanted to take chances and we can all look back now and say it worked, that the election was peaceful and people conducted themselves well. But it worked because the election was held in only one state, which made it possible for all these resources to be mobilised. Will it work next year when elections will hold in about 30 states on the same day and at the same time? Where will the policemen be mobilized from? And what will be the implication if 23,000 policemen are not deployed in each state? Will the people – politicians and electorate alike – still do what is expected of them without security men breathing down their neck?

In other countries, including here in Africa, you will hardly see policemen on the streets on the day of election. When General Yakubu Gowon went to Ghana as leader of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) team that monitored the country’s last presidential election, he was surprised that there were no gun wielding policemen around. They drove round unescorted by policemen.

So, why can’t elections be held in this country without militarizing the process? That is one thing that must be sorted out and quickly too.

But one thing the election has proved most conclusively is the fact that where there is the political will, a free and fair election is possible. It has also proved that majority of our people yearn for free and fair elections. The Anambra poll has also proved that for a free and fair poll, the political class must put its house in order. If politicians agree to work for a free and fair election, the electoral umpire will have no choice than to respect the wishes of the people.

The outcome of theelection in Etsako Central state constituency of Edo State and last Saturday’s election has shown that a political leadership with the will to do what is right can make all the difference in election matters. For too long, the political class has deceitfully made the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Maurice Iwu, the fall guy for all their atrocities against Nigerians.

Unfortunately, those who shout loudest are the worst election riggers, who subvert internal democracy in their own parties and foist candidates on everyone. What has been successfully proved in the Anambra poll is that free and fair election is possible in Nigeria and that Iwu is not the problem. It is also a fact that the difficulties we experience is not because we have no good laws to regulate elections. With or without the electoral reform, Nigerians can still have free and fair election. Our extant laws can guarantee fair poll. What is needed is attitudinal change.

To be fixated on one man and elevating him to the status of a God is defeatist because neither Iwu nor other INEC officials snatch ballot boxes. They are not the people who stuff ballot boxes.  The manipulation of the voters’ register starts with the politicians.

All these are informed by the desperation to win at all cost, an anomaly that is inflamed by the perception of election as a zero-sum game where nobody takes prisoners.

For us to deepen our democracy there must be attitudinal change. People must begin to see election as a game in which somebody must win and all others will lose.

INEC has done a good job and must be commended. The Commission has shown with the Anambra Election and despite the hiccups, particularly the Voters register crisis, that free and fair elections are possible in Nigeria. And everybody has a role to play. Nigerians must be vigilant and should not take anything for granted. INEC has proved that with the help of everybody, they can deliver on the promise of free and fair election. What the Commission needs is the encouragement and support of all.

The manipulation of the voters register nearly marred the Anambra election. It is good that Commission in drawing a good less from the sad occurrence has decided to initiate a programme of display and review of the voters register, to revalidate voters’ register at ward level throughout the country between April and June. All registered voters should use the opportunity to check their names. That is the essence of the display.

The business of election is a serious one which must be taken serious by everybody involved in the process. It is by so doing that we can quickly seize the opportunity which the Anambra election has offered us to ensure that free and fair elections become the norm in our democratic enterprise.

No Power Vacuum In Nigeria – Aondoakaa

 

Many Nigerians and indeed the international community believe that there is a dangerous power vacuum in the country.

Seventy six days after the President, Umaru Yar’Adua, went to Saudi Arabia to treat a heart ailment, Nigeria has neither a substantive President, literally speaking, nor an acting one.

But the Federal Attorney General and Justice Minister, Michael Aondoakaa, says such view is most uninformed. Nigeria, he emphatically told Ikechukwu Amaechi, Editor, Daily Independent, is not running on auto pilot. Excerpts.

 

In July, it will be three years since you became the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice.  How has it been so far?

Well, it has been a wonderful experience because for every lawyer, whenever you become the Attorney General, you feel fulfilled.

As the Chief Law Officer of the country, what reforms have you brought to bear on the system?

At least I have brought one major thing that was missing in the country – the issue of the rule of law – on the table.  For people to think and know that this country is supposed to be governed according to the law.

It has never happened in this country.  Even if people say yes, it is not observed in the manner they wanted, at least, there is something on the table for Nigeria to aspire to achieve as a country.

On that same issue of rule of law, some people contend that for this government, it has become a cliché or a deliberate ploy to deceive the people.

You know some people are professional critics, so you don’t need to bother about them, because there is no alternative to rule of law.  I have not seen any civilized country that is based on any other thing other than observance of law and due process.  Can the so-called critics point out that this or that country became a great superpower, which did not base its governance on rule of law?

You seem to be the most controversial minister today.  Does it come with the portfolio or it has to do with Michael Aondoakaa’s person?

The office of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice is an active office.  And you know in Nigeria, if you are doing your job well, people must talk.

So, to say I am controversial, that is not true.  What I can say is that I am doing my job well with results which are affecting people in various ways.  And based on how it affects each person, that is why they are also reacting in various ways.

Your primary constituency which is the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), ought to be your bulwark.  If you are doing your job well as you say, they should be your strongest supporters or people you run to when others attack you.  But they seem to be your greatest critics.  Why?

I don’t really think they are critics, they are just making their own opinion.  But the set up of the system is not me running to NBA, it is the other way round.  NBA should be running to me.

The NBA is under the General Counsel.  I am President of the General Counsel.  It is there in Section 1 of the Legal Practitioners Act.  I am the one to set up rules that will manage the affairs of NBA.  The General Council is made up of the Federal Attorney General who is the President, old and state Attorneys General and 20 Nigerians who are charged with the responsibility of the management of the NBA and setting rules for the NBA, subject to the constitution of the NBA.

So, it is not me to run to NBA, it is NBA that will run to me because the General counsel is superior.  NBA is just an association incorporated based on instrument granted by me.  Where I say me, I mean the office of the Attorney General.

The incumbent President of the NBA, Rotimi Akeredolu, seems to think that by your actions you are weakening rather than strengthening the rule of law?

That is his own thinking and he is not God that would think that he is infallible.  But I don’t want to join issues with him.

All I have to say is that he should not expect that his thinking will be the right thing that would be applicable in the country.  But as at now, I am the Attorney General.  My thinking on the issues of law based on section 150 is the official thinking that has to be obeyed, not that of the NBA.

Will you agree that your interpretation of the law most times is coloured by political expediency?

I interpret the law based on how the law is.  Anybody who faults me should go to court.  I have not got a single judgment against me.  So, that means my interpretation of the law has been correct.  In all the interpretations, the few that have been tested, the Court found me right.

So, it doesn’t matter somebody sitting in his or her small little office to say I don’t agree or going to the media to say I do not agree.  The position of the law remains consistent.

Including the fact that you said the President of Nigeria can govern from anywhere in the world and does not need to reside in Nigeria?

I have corrected this assertion because it was obviously exaggerated and twisted out of context.  I said Section 5 of the constitution vests executive powers of the Federation in the person of the President.  And I maintain it.  It is not vested in the office of the President but the person of the President.  And the wordings of the Section are clear.  That he can exercise it himself directly or through other people.

So, if the powers are vested in his person, it then means that anywhere he goes, he has it.  If it were just powers invested in the office and you meet him outside the office, he will say wait, when I get back to the office, my power is inside the office, that is a different thing.

Of course, when the president traveled to Brazil on official duties, he didn’t leave the powers here.  When he goes to the United Nations, it does mean he left the powers in Nigeria.

He carries the powers along with him and right there at the United Nations, he exercises the powers of the President of Nigeria.

But right now, he is not on official duty in Saudi Arabia.

There is no difference in any situation.  The powers can only be removed through constitutionally laid down rules.  The provisions are there in the constitution.  The one of impeachment and the one of incapacity.  That is all.

On the issue of incapacity, after the Federal Executive Council meeting last week, you addressed the media and said it was unanimously agreed that Yar’Adua is still fit to govern Nigeria.  What exactly is your definition of incapacity?

First, I was mandated to address the press after the meeting of the Executive Council of the Federation, which complied with the order of the Court.

So, I was speaking what every other member of the Executive Council of the Federation decided.  If there was any dissent, it was a different thing, but everybody agreed including the Vice President.  And my decisions were that the President was not incapable of discharging his functions.

What the Federal Executive Council was asked to do, simplicita, was removal of the President from office on the ground of incapacity.

The relief of the plaintiff was that the president was permanently incapacitated and should be removed from office.  No other thing was brought before the Federal Executive Council other than invoking Section 144.

Invoking that Section does not also make any other person an Acting President.  It simply removes the President who is found culpable of infraction of Section 144 and replaces him with an alternative.  That is all.  It is meant to remove the Vice President or remove a President if it is found that they are incapable of discharging their duties on the ground of incapacity.

So, how come you adjudge a President who has not been seen in public for over two months during which period he was only able to speak for less than two minutes still capable of governing the country? 

Incapacity as defined in the dictionary is when you have completely lost all mental faculties.  It is there.  But you can see evidence that a President who spoke on radio and addressed the world on BBC cannot be said to have a total loss of his mental faculties.  But I want you to understand that this is a  collective decision, a decision which if you want me to explain, you go to each member of council who collectively ruled that from the evidence and what they have seen, the President is not permanently incapacitated.

Going to hospital for medical treatment does not make you incapacitated to be removed from office based on section 144.

Perhaps!  But could you tell Nigerians as the Attorney General of the Federation, a very pre-eminent portfolio, how many times you have been able to speak with the President in the last two months?

It is not a matter of speaking with the President that is on ground.

This is how people are trying to reduce this matter to a most simplistic level.  What you should be asking is how many executive powers have I exercised to keep the function of government.  It is not a matter of speaking to the President.  That is not the issue.

A conversation between people is private.  Even when he was present, when I speak with him, do I go to the press to say today, I spoke to the President?  It doesn’t matter.  The status quo remains the same.  People are trying to look at very trivial matters.

Government is going on, things are being done.  Today, new ambassadors submitted their letters of credence, people saw it and they are still talking of speaking to the President.

Even when he was here, how many times will a Minister come out and say I have just finished talking to the president?  So why should Ministers change this position now and everyday say I want to tell the world that I spoke with the president.

Why it may be true that the fact of ill health in itself does not constitute incapacity, but the President’s absence for two months and no idea whatsoever of when he will come back is worrisome.  It is strange or you don’t think so?

You have been briefed.  What happened to the President is not a secret.  It was made known to you that the President developed a heart condition and he is undergoing treatment.  From Day One, you were told that this is the situation and he is undergoing treatment.  At this stage, what should concern Nigerians and people who have elements of human feelings is how well is he recovering.

People have been on wheelchairs and ran their countries, powerful nations. What people are trying to say does not make sense.  And government is a collective responsibility.  If this government has not been formed, then you can question that collective responsibility.  But it has been formed and responsibilities have been given and these responsibilities are being carried out.

So, this is what I am saying.  That people are trying to simply use the issue to make the job of a president that of micro managing the affairs of this country.

No, a President is not supposed to micro-manage.  That is why ministers are appointed.  And wherever a minister is, he is the president.

I will give you an example.  The fact that the President didn’t go to the UN last time was a big story, that we will lose the seat.  But what happened?  Not only did we win the seat, we scored the highest vote.  That shows you that the executive powers vested in the President were exercised through the Foreign Affairs Minister.  That is the simple truth that people just do not want to appreciate.

Today, as we are here, the Foreign Affairs Minister is at the UN trying to contribute the country’s quota in solving one of the world’s most devastating human calamities – the earthquake in Haiti.  The President does not need to go to the UN to show that concern.  This is one of the things people should learn to appreciate not to personalize events.

I think it is a hangover that makes people to believe that every single thing of government must be from the President’s table.  It is not supposed to be so.

You seem to be suggesting that the country may well do without a President.  If the President is to perform such minimal role in the affairs of the country, why do we have to bother spending billions of naira to elect one?  Can President Obama, for instance, stay outside the U.S. for two months and say it doesn’t matter because he has ministers or President Attah Mills of Ghana?  The country is on auto-pilot.  And you think it doesn’t matter?

Are you a student of history? 

Yes, I am.

Then go back to the US history before you pass a judgment.  You are just taking the history of America after 250 years and trying to draw a conclusion.  Go back to America’s history and know whether at any given time a President suffered a disability such as has afflicted President Yar’Adua now.  So, go back and find out.  Don’t just jump into conclusion. 

The issue of auto-piloting does not arise.  It is a matter of simple sickness, he will recover and come back to do his job.

Why are you so comfortable with section 5 of the Constitution while ignoring section 145?

I am not ignoring section 145.  Both of them are running concurrently in the constitution.  It is like two eyes.  So that if one closes, the other one should open.

If it is so, then what is difficult about a President transmitting a letter to the National Assembly, saying he is on medical vacation and that Jonathan should act until he comes back?

You can’t ask me a question which is based on somebody else’s discretionary power, because history and precedence shows that the power is discretionary.  The wielding of the power itself is discretionary.  So, I am not in a position to answer it.

But this same letter was written by this same president who is being portrayed as being unwilling the first time he traveled on medial vacation and members of his kitchen cabinet sat on it.  So, why are you afraid of implementing Section 145?

First, I am not aware of the existence of a kitchen cabinet.  We have one executive council and one united body.  As at now, we are united and executive powers which has now been delegated to the Vice President, we are all taking orders from him.  I am not aware of a kitchen cabinet.

Why is the FEC holding out on this Section 145 even when the Senate and the Council of Elders led by General Yakubu Gowon and President Shehu Shagari have advised the President to transmit this letter?  What are you really afraid of?  Why is it seemingly impossible for you to see what the rest of the country is seeing?

Let us distinguish two things.  We were confronted with two different situations.  The FEC was ordered to remove the president or asked to commence the process of removal of the president from office.

The Senate and elders are talking about temporary transfer of power.  So, they are two different things.  So, the issue of whether the FEC can hold on does not arise because FEC is never vested with the power of transmission of letter to the Senate.  We don’t have a single provision that we can invoke.  The best we can do is an appeal like the Senate has done.

But if I read the court judgment that informed the FEC decision well, I am not too sure the judge said you should remove the President.  It said, you should within two weeks determine whether the president is still able to perform his duties?

The court said we should invoke section 144.  What is the provision of Section 144?  When you are asked to invoke it, what does that mean?

Section 144 is abinitio a process of removal of the president on the ground of incapacity, which is related to his physical fitness to rule the country.

But it is a constitutional issue, is it not?  So, if the court tells you to invoke Section 144, why not?

The court did not just say go and do it.  Go and read the judgment again.  It said the FEC should determine whether or not the president is fit to rule the country.  If it is that, then, it does not even fall within our jurisdiction.  All we have to do is to keep the process going.  If we say yes, he is incapable of discharging his duties, that does not even remove the president.  It will only start a process.  The process will be that resolution.

But the Court ruling gave a discretion – whether or not.  So, why should you expect that FEC should not have a right to decide either way?  Or it must be exercised in a way you feel it must be decided?

You absolutely have the right to decide the way you have decided but that decision ought to be based on some kind of evidence.  The evidence before the world right now seems to suggest that the president is incapacitated. That is why eyebrows are being raised at your decision?

That is also a most uninformed reading of Section 144 which says it is after that decision is made that a medical team is constituted. FEC has no powers to constitute a medical team.  If it is a fault in the legislation, go and amend it.  And that is why Senate in their wisdom is talking of amending the Section.  It is not for us to twist the law.  The law did not vest us with the power of calling a doctor.  It is after we have taken that decision that the doctors can be called in by the Senate President.  They will now constitute a medical team – five doctors.  So, who are we to go and start inviting the doctors.  You want us to take over the job of the Senate President?

Will you be surprised to hear tomorrow that there are indeed moves in the Presidency to get Yar’Adua to transmit this letter?

Why should I be surprised?  My  aspiration is that the provisions of the Constitution must be followed.  So, why should I be surprised?

First, I am not against the Senate appealing to the President to transmit the letter.  It is an appeal.  Of course, they have no powers to compel the President to transmit the letter.  That is why they are  urging him and any other person who has urged him has not committed a crime.

But the discretion is his.  It is a voluntary transfer.  It is not a mandatory transfer.  So, neither you, Senate nor the elders have control over it.  All we do is to appeal.  So, why should I be surprised if he did it?

In this political quagmire we have boxed ourselves into, some people have argued that it has opened the door for a serial breach of the constitution.  For instance, they contend that power to deploy troops can only be executed by a substantive Commander-in-Chief or somebody acting in that capacity.  Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan, is neither of the above, yet he deployed troops in Jos, Plateau State?

This is a country that people are not ready to respect organs of government.  A judge has said that the Vice President has such powers.  So, who are you to  sit in your house and say the Vice President does not have such powers!

The Judge said he can exercise any or all of the executive powers.  Deployment of troops is an executive function.

Is he exercising these powers after consultation with the President or not?

We don’t work like that.  The court ruled that no authority other than the President has the power to ask the president.  So, who am I to go and ask him?  I respect the court.  I am not like the others who will sit and say the court is wrong without going on appeal.  It is the right of an interested party who is affected by a judgment to go on appeal.  It is not for you to make cheap publicity by just sitting in your house making no effort to appeal against the judgment and just whipping up sentiment on the pages of newspapers, instigating disobedience of the constitutional authorities of the courts and acting contemptuously by criticizing and inciting people.  If we lose the judiciary, we lose the whole system.

For how long do you think this can continue?

I don’t understand the question.

The entire polity is on tenterhooks as it were.  It is being overheated because we are not doing what we ought to do …

Now, I have got you.  How long will it continue?  You should ask them (opposition) how long they will continue to overheat the system, not me.

Ask the people who are overheating the system; who are refusing to accept constitutional provision.  We have three arms of government – Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary. The Judiciary has been elevated above the other two because it is the only organ that can strike down any excesses of the other two.

Whenever there is a constitutional crisis, people in a civilized country will go to court.  That is the right thing to do.  Then a court has said, yes, all that the Vice President has been doing, acting on behalf of  the President is valid.  Now if people have any respect for the courts, nowhere in the world, no civilized country will subject the judiciary to ridicule as it is being done now; subjecting the judgment of the courts to another debate.  It is ridiculous.

It doesn’t happen because the constitution itself is designed so that it does not happen.  Section 287, Sub Section 3 has enjoined all authorities and all persons to comply with the judgment of the court.

So, it beats my imagination which sort of country we are running when a court decides an issue and some people are saying we should still go and debate the judgment of a court.  It should be the other way round.  The constitution is not designed for court judgment to be debated either by the executive or legislature or any other person.

You can criticize in more civilized ways – intellectual criticism in magazines, you journalists can write editorials – but not to incite disobedience to decisions of a court.

Are you aware that there are some permanent secretariats – 13 of them – that are yet to be sworn in because of the President’s absence thereby jeopardizing the effective running of the civil service?

But you have heard that it is not because  of the absence of the President.

Is it because of what?

Because the Oaths Act provides for the Chief Justice to even swear in a Chief of Army Staff.  So, that couldn’t be a reason.  Maybe the vacancies they are supposed to fill do not yet exist. But I am not the Head of Service.

Ask the Head of Service that question but certainly not the issue law.  Go and look at the Oath Act.  The Chief of Army Staff, Permanent Secretaries, and Ministers can be sworn in by the Chief Justice of the Federation.

Both the President and the Chief Justice have the powers to swear in these categories of people I have mentioned.

You don’t seem to see any power vacuum whatsoever in the system?

I am in the system and the system is working.

But even some of your colleagues in FEC privately confess that nothing is working in the system.

Can you name them?  If you can, then I can inquire from them.  General assertion does not prove anything just like general denial.  All these general assertion that there is a failure of system is nothing.  You must be specific to show which is the failure and prove it.

But there is a division in the Presidency?

There is no division in the Presidency.  If there was, there wouldn’t have been an Executive Council and there wouldn’t have been a unanimous decision.  At best, it would have been a split decision because what the constitution requires is two-third of members of the Federal Executive Council.

So, what other evidence do you want that the system is not divided.

Three years down the road, what has this government achieved?

You are giving me a task that can take another day and I will give you time to come, then I will roll out our achievements.  The infrastructural improvement we have accomplished, the road network we are upgrading.  In agriculture, we are trying to curb overdependence on oil sector, the reforms of the petroleum sector, making it more profitable and more beneficial; the banking reforms that are going on.   A lot of things are going on.  I am just giving you a synopsis.  But it requires another day’s interview, a whole 24 hour interview.  This is a highly planned administration that is prepared to give quality to its decisions.

This is the first time that each contract that is given has a plan of action.  No contractor has abandoned any site on the ground of non-payment because you must design your contract and show the cash flow to carry the project to the end.  These are some of the major reforms that we have introduced.  Everything is coming up.  A modern airport is on the way.  The rail system collapsed, the inland waterways was not set up.  No country can exist without these basic transportation system that will complement the road transportation system because a truly agricultural country must have an efficient inland waterways and must have an efficient rail system.

Those things collapsed and if we say we want to reactivate them and bring them at par with other societies, we deserve commendation.

Except that many Nigerians don’t seem to see what you are seeing.  Where are these projects?  You promised 6,000 megawatts of electricity by December 2009, where is it?

We didn’t promise we will deliver 6000 megawatts in a period of crisis.  Nigerians must be objective.  Human beings must actually accept reality.  When we promised you 6,000 megawatts, the time the President read the speech, there was no crisis in the Niger Delta, where the gas is supposed to come from.

Now what happened.  Even contracts that were awarded, nobody could even enter the Niger Delta to execute them.  We had to at least sacrifice one thing.  So, what did we have to sacrifice?  Maybe the promise of 6,000 megawatts but let us settle the Niger Delta issues.  We did.

Hon Minister, your storyline, I am afraid, cannot be said to be entirely correct.  The Niger Delta crisis predated the Yar’Adua Administration.  So, as at the time the President made the promise, the crisis was in full bloom.  So, the issue of crisis is an after thought.

Besides, until a month or two to December, the Minister of Power was still assuring the nation that the government was on target.  That looks more like deceit?

How can you say it is an afterthought?  Was there no fight in the Niger Delta?  Was there no blowing of pipelines in the Niger Delta?

These things were there.

So, the word after thought is misplaced.

No, it is not because inspite of the crisis, the Minister was still standing on the promise until the last day?

The crisis finished on October 4, 2009.  That is when the amnesty offer ended.  And nobody could know the magnitude of damage that occurred to the pipelines before then, because nobody could enter there.

Many people would rather blame the crisis of leadership in the country rather than agitation by Niger Delta Youths?

Niger Delta crisis did not start with this administration but was addressed by it.  So, if your perception of lack of leadership is that, then I will say that those people who say that, I am sorry for them.

A quality leadership will first aim at getting brothers and sisters who are highly agitated to come together, sit down and talk.

Getting them together is not for the purpose of facilitating an enjoyment of electricity.  No.  But providing a conducive and high quality life to fellow Nigerians who came from the Niger Delta.  That priority supercedes every other thing.  To me, if there is peace in this country and this administration cannot  achieve any other thing, I will say it has achieved all.

Would you then say we have peace in the country now?

We are on the road to peace.  There is peace in the Niger Delta …

And crisis in Plateau State?

Crisis erupts.  There is no country that does not have crisis.  It happens in America where somebody takes a gun, in a civilized country, and shoots fellow citizens to death.

So, crisis is not new anywhere.  What matters is the ability of government to contain it and to protect life and properties of its citizens. That is makes the difference.

Are you saying you are satisfied with the extent this government has protected the lives and properties of the people?

Definitely.  I am completely satisfied.  But we can do more and we aim to do more.

You don’t seem to agree with the position of the immediate past President, General Olusegun Obasanjo, that President Umaru Yar’Adua has a moral obligation to call it quit, if indeed his health can no longer carry him?

I don’t like to talk or comment on the opinion of people who are clearly my superiors.  You mentioned a past President and I have never been a past president.  I don’t want to talk about such people.  What informed his views, I am not in a position to know.  So, I can’t comment.

At his level, I am not in a position to join issues with him.  I am saying my own as Michael Aondoakaa.  I don’t want to be associated with answering him or talking to him.  His opinion is his opinion.

Are you aware that Nigeria’s prestige in the comity of Nations is waning?

What are your statistics?

The U.S. Secretary of State, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, recently said poor leadership has robbed Nigerians the quality of life they rightly deserve? Do you agree?

Well, I didn’t read that.  But if she was talking about what happened to Farouk Abdulmutallab, of course, there are instances of U.S. citizens killing fellow citizens.  Is that also a consequence of poor leadership?

If President Umaru Yar’Adua could talk on BBC, are you saying that you are not worried that he could not extend such courtesy to fellow Nigerians even after more than 350 fellow citizens were slaughtered in one week in Jos?

The question should be, when people were killed, didn’t the government react?  You are failing  to understand something.  You are personalizing government.  Government is a collective responsibility …

But in a Presidential system, with executive powers, the president embodies the powers of the state, like you always insist …

But he also delegates such powers.  He does not carry it on his head like a bag of rice.  The work that the policeman does is an executive power, what the customs does is an executive power.  All these are embodied in his person.  So, I don’t know what you are talking about.

What I am talking about is that this government is running on auto pilot, without a leader.

No!  It is not running on auto pilot. 

There is a leader, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.  The government is working.  He is sick and he has delegated his executive powers to the Vice President. He went for medical treatment and Vice President is doing his job.  You should stop confusing matters.

Why is it impossible for the President to address Nigerians?

Ask Segun Adeniyi, not me.  I don’t overstep my bounds.  I am not a pressman.  Segun is the President’s spokesman; he is the one that schedules when the president can address the nation.  So, when you meet him, ask him not me.

The unfortunate thing is that all the people who are talking are people who can privately give their advice to the president.

So, in my opinion, setting cameras and advertising the  advice will not be helpful.  It will only deepen division, create confusion and might even create suspicion of the motives.  What exactly is the point going public if I am in a position to advise the president and I can reach the president, I can then tell him to do this or that.

All these hullabaloo would have been informal discussion.  Even in America when power is transmitted, it is treated as security matter.  It is only when the President recovers his power that it is made known to the public.  That is how it has been the three times power was transmitted in the U.S.  So, why must it become such a highly dramatized matter in Nigeria?

I have been close to the Vice President.  It is not that he is desperate, that he wants to undo his boss, but the impression that people are creating is not a good one.  They are overheating the system, creating division among two people who are ordinarily so tied together.

All these people can go to the president.  Some of them are from the president’s immediate environment.  Why can’t they advise him privately?  Must you go to the NTA to make an advice?  How is that going to be helpful?

Opposition Not Creating Good Impression Of Jonathan – Aondoakaa

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Published as News on Sunday, February2, 2010

As pressure continues to mount on ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua to hand over power to his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa, has accused the agitators of planting the seed of suspicion and mistrust in the Presidency.

Yar’Adua, who travelled to Saudi Arabia 76 days ago to treat heart ailment, has neither been seen in the public nor addressed Nigerians.

His long absence without complying with the provision of Section 145 of the Constitution which requires him to officially write to both the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives, a move that would enable his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, to assumed power in an acting capacity has provoked street protests by civil society groups and eminent Nigerian leaders including former Military Heads of State, Presidents and Chief Justices of the Federal.

The Senate had also passed a resolution calling on the President to transmit the letter.

But Aondoakaa condemns what he described as the “dramatization of the advice” insisting that it is creating suspicion in the Presidency.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Sunday Independent, the Justice Minister said it is more so because some of those agitating publicly have access to the President.

Said he:  “The unfortunate thing is that all the people who are talking are people who can privately give their advice to the President. So, in my opinion, setting cameras and advertising the advice will not be helpful.  It will only deepen division, create confusion and might even create suspicion of the motives.  What exactly is the point of going public if I am in a position to advise the President and I can reach the President, I can then tell him to do this or that?”

Aondoakaa insisted that all the agitators hoped to achieve through street protests would have been done through informal discussion arguing that, “Even in America when power is transmitted, it is treated as a security matter.  It is only when the President recovers his power that it is made known to the public.  That is how it has been the three times power was transmitted in the U.S.  So, why must it become such a highly dramatized matter in Nigeria?”

Aondoakaa said those orchestrating the protests are rupturing the otherwise cording relationship between the Vice President and his boss. “I have been close to the Vice President.  It is not that he is desperate, that he wants to undo his boss, but the impression that people are creating is not a good one.  They are overheating the system, creating division among two people who are ordinarily so tied together.

“All these people can go to the President.  Some of them are from the President’s immediate environment.  Why can’t they advise him privately?  Must they go to the NTA to give an advice?  How is that going to be helpful?”

The Minister admitted that the President is ill but quickly added that it is not unusual.  “People have been on wheelchairs and ran their countries, powerful nations. What people are trying to say does not make sense.  Government is a collective responsibility.  If this government has not been formed, then you can question that collective responsibility.  But it has been formed and responsibilities have been given and these responsibilities are being carried out.

“People are trying to simply use the issue to make the job of a President that of micro managing the affairs of this country. No, a President is not supposed to micro-manage.  That is why ministers are appointed.  And wherever a Minister is, he is the President.”

Aondoakaa also dismissed the allegations by the Nigerian Bar Association President, Rotimi Akeredolu, that he is weakening the rule of law by his actions rather than strengthening it.

“That is his own thinking and he is not infallible. He is not God. But I don’t want to join issues with him.

“All I will say is that he should not expect that his thinking will be the right thing that would be applicable in the country.  As at now, I am the Attorney General.  My thinking on the issues of law based on section 150 is the official thinking that has to be obeyed, not that of the NBA.

“I interpret the law based on how the law is.  Anybody who faults me should go to court.  I have not got a single judgment against me.  So, that means my interpretation of the law has been correct.  In all the interpretations, the few that have been tested, the Court found me right.

“So, it doesn’t matter somebody sitting in his or her small little office to say I don’t agree or going to the media to say I do not agree.  The position of the law remains consistent.”

Tales From The Federal Capital Territory

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Published: February 2, 2010

I was in Abuja over the weekend to feel the pulse of the country’s seat of power. It turned out an interesting voyage. I went to see and talk to men and women of power, those who are making the authoritative allocation of state values in the absence of ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua. I walked the streets of the Federal Capital Territory and listened to the scuttlebutt.

I went to Abuja to appreciate why our leaders seem to be so unaffected by the hues and cries in the land. Are they living in a different country? Why is it that they don’t seem to feel what we feel or see what we see?

Why are they pursuing rats, as the Igbo would say, when this house called Nigeria is on fire? A house all of us live in, which we all call our home!

The first thing that shocked me was the fact that the fuel crisis in Abuja, the headquarters of the almighty Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), was worse than Lagos. Since we settled for the pump price of at least N80.00, you can easily fill your tank without much hassle in Lagos. Not in Abuja where queues stretch kilometers. Motorists now spend endless nights at petrol stations praying and hoping that they would see petrol to buy. I asked myself if Rilwanu Lukman, the Petroleum Minister, and his Minister of State, Odein Ajumogobia, see the long queues when they drive to work in the morning and what goes on in their minds.

Do they ever pause to think that this government has failed? Do they ever consider the cost of the crisis in terms of the man-hour lost in search of petrol? Fuel scarcity has, literally speaking, grounded Abuja. But if the information I got at the NNPC was anything to go by, then what is happening now is only but a tip of the proverbial iceberg.

National petrol stock would last only 10 days, I was told on Thursday, the same day NNPC, the lone importer of petroleum products now scrambled to place orders for February deliveries. I was told that 24 cargoes are expected and they would start arriving on February 8. But the NNPC, according to the Minister of State for Finance, Remi Babalola, is owing the government N450 billion and has serious cash flow problems. Why is Nigeria, one of the biggest exporters of crude oil finding it almost impossible to refine the problem for local consumption? Nigeria is perhaps the only member of the oil carter – Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) – that imports refined petroleum products to meet local consumption.

On Thursday night, I had a lengthy interview with the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa, who is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). He is perhaps the most controversial minister in the present dispensation. I asked him if that naturally comes with the portfolio or has to do with his person and style.  He disagrees that he is controversial but admits that the office of the “Attorney General and Minister of Justice is an active office.”

So? He insists that people are talking about him because he is doing his job well. “You know in Nigeria, if you are doing your job, people must talk. So, it is not true to say that I am controversial. What I can say is that I am doing my job well with results which are affecting people in various ways. And based on how it affects each person, that is why they are also reacting in various ways.”

I had loads of question and would have gone on all night if he did not stop me. “I won’t answer any other question,” he told me brusquely at a point and that was it. I still had more questions to ask. The more I spoke to Aondoakaa that night, the more bewildered I was. How come they don’t see what we see? How come that they don’t appreciate that the country is on a precipice and needs only a little push to tumble over?

The smart guy that he is, the Attorney General is confident that he is not a slippery slope. The law they say is an ass and he is having a jolly good ride. But while he may be on a solid ground on matters of law, the present state of anomie in the country has legal, moral and political implications. Treating one in isolation is tantamount to playing the ostrich.

Aondoakaa is not bothered. “I interpret the law based on how the law is. Anybody who faults me should go to court. I have not got a single judgment against me, so that means my interpretation of the law has been correct. So, it doesn’t matter somebody sitting in his or her little office to say I do not agree. The position of the law remains consistent,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

I left the Justice Minister’s house midnight more worried. Could it be that they are right and all of us are wrong, after all? Why are the big wheels of this government insisting that there is no crisis in spite of all that has happened and are still happening?

On Friday, I got two pieces of information that deepened my worries. Both confirmed the debilitating power game that has left the country plumbing the depths of infamy and notoriety and the fact that we are all pawns on the political chess board.

The first story was how the hawks in the Yar’Adua government effectively put paid to any move to hand over power to Jonathan. Rattled by the call for a formal transfer of power from Yar’Adua to the Vice President Goodluck Jonathan in accordance with Section 145 of the Constitutiion, a call which was ratcheted up on Wednesday by the Senate and on Thursday by the Eminent Elders Committee, led by General Yakubu Gowon and President Shehu Shagari, they agreed that the President should do the needful which was transmitting a letter to the National Assembly leadership on his health condition, thereby clearing they way for Jonathan to step in as acting President.

The President’s Principal Secretary, David Edevbie, the same man who allegedly took the 2009 Supplementary Budget to the president to sign on his sick bed, had already travelled to get the letter. Then Federal High Court Chief Judge, Justice Daniel Abutu, delivered his judgment on Friday.

The court ruled that Yar’Adua is vested with exclusive discretion whether or not to hand over. The constitution, Abutu ruled, leaves it to the President to decide whether or not to write a letter to the National Assembly on his medical trip. If he does, fine! But if he doesn’t, he has not violated any law. The hawks made a u-turn, told Edevbie not to bother and popped some bottles of champagne.

But while they were clinking glasses, Senate President, David Mark, was refusing to receive any Executive Bill from the Vice President until Yar’Adua transmits the letter. Jonathan himself was said to have sworn that he will not send any Bills to Mark unless the man changes his mind. Meanwhile, many believe that the two are reading the same page and are only trying to pile pressure on the system for political reasons.

I was told that the whole hullabaloo about Yar’Adua’s health, his “reluctance” to transmit letter and the intrigues have only one target – 2011 polls. If Jonathan becomes acting President, will he agree for another Northerner to fly PDP’s presidential flag next year? If another Northerner takes over next year, will he agree to serve only one term so that power can come back to the South or insist on completing two terms? As an incumbent President, it will be hard to dislodge Jonathan, so it is better to stop him from acquiring full executive powers before the next elections or before PDP picks a presidential candidate.

Meanwhile, the President is marooned in Jeddah, and for all you may know, is ignorant of what is being done here in his name.

I left Abuja on Saturday with one prayer on my lips – God save Nigeria!

Obasanjo: The Limits Of Hypocrisy

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Published: January 26, 2010

Nigeria’s former President, General Olusegun Obasanjo, is very predictable. He is as constant, to borrow a cliché, as the Northern Star. At all times, you can be sure of one thing; his capacity for monkey business will always be breathtaking. Even in his old age, his propensity for mischief is simply out of this world.

It was, therefore, not surprising when, true to character, he used the occasion of the Seventh Annual Trust Dialogue in Abuja to wash his hands off the country’s great misfortune – Umaru Yar’Adua Presidency. Obasanjo said God should punish him if he picked Yar’Adua as President so that he will not perform. Nigerians should chorus Amen.

 Again, he said he feels highly insulted whenever people say he deliberately picked an invalid as his successor. I can only say that what is happening to him now is a tip of the axiomatic iceberg. For bringing Nigeria to its knees, using the ultimate power in the land for evil rather than good, history will still insult him.

What is surprising, though, is that some Nigerians, knowing what happened between 2006 and 2007 and how Obasanjo, playing God, went berserk with power, are pleading the former president’s innocence. It reminds me of a similar attempt by some people to exonerate General Ibrahim Babangida from the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Chief Richard Akinjide, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, is one of such people. According to a report in The Guardian last Saturday, Akinjide was quoted as absolving Obasanjo of any blame in the emergence of Yar’Adua as president.

In a disingenuous show of clannish parapo, Akinjide would rather blame a phantom medical panel which Obasanjo claimed he consulted after he made up his mind that Yar’Adua was going to succeed him willy-nilly. According to him; “I think something was wrong with the medical advice Obasanjo was given. Though I am not competent to comment on that because I was not an insider, but whoever gave the medical advice saying Yar’Adua was fit to perform the functions of his office, has contributed immensely to the present crisis.”

Akinjide should have asked Obasanjo to name the doctors he consulted. Knowing him, a man who takes no prisoners, if such a team of doctors ever existed, he would have announced their names, having decided to extract his pound of flesh from Yar’Adua.

But even if we agree for the sake of argument that some doctors gave Yar’Adua a clean bill of health, Akinjide himself recalled that “during the campaign (in 2007), it was an open secret that when Yar’Adua was campaigning in Ado-Ekiti, he collapsed, which shows clearly he could not cope with the stress of his office.” Obasanjo said that much also. “At one stage of the campaigns, it was intense; he was run down … he went abroad for check-up and the rumour was that he was dead.”

Now, if Obasanjo meant well, that particular incident would have flashed the danger signal. By this time, he had spent almost eight years in Aso Rock and knew how stressful it is – physically, mentally and emotionally – to govern a country as complex and underdeveloped as Nigeria. Didn’t it occur to him that a man who could not withstand the rigours of campaign that did not last more than two months cannot effectively govern this country for four years? Throughout the campaign, Yar’Adua’s health was an issue, so much so that he challenged skeptics to a game of squash. Is Obasanjo saying that he didn’t know then that Yar’Adua was lying?

Obasanjo’s cynical confession also threw up the issue of the toxic democracy variant that our leaders have foisted on the country. As one-time American President, Abraham Lincoln, defined it, democracy is government of the people, by the people and for the people. The only thing that distinguishes democracy from other forms of government is the ‘people element.’ Unfortunately, it is this all-important element that is sorely missing in our polity.

There was nowhere in Obasanjo’s narration of how Yar’Adua was chosen as his successor that Nigerian people were factored in. First, he unilaterally decided that it would not augur well for the country if a southerner succeeded him. Having so decided, he now came up with the qualities that the man he wants, not to run his Ota Farms but to superintend over the affairs of the estimated 140 million Nigerians, must have.

“I was looking for somebody who will succeed me who has three important qualities. One, he has enough intellectual capacity to run the affairs of this nation; two, he has sufficient personal integrity to run the affairs of this country; three, he is sufficiently broad minded enough, politically, religiously, socially, whatever to manage the affairs of this country. These three were important and very primary to me.”

Now, even if we agree, given the peculiar circumstances of our nationhood and the primordial tendencies that govern our actions, that the president ought to come from the North after eight years of “Southern Presidency” is Obasanjo saying that of all Nigerians of northern extraction, Yar’Adua was the only one that fitted the bill? Yes, Yar’Adua may have the intellectual capacity and personal integrity to run the country, but so are many other Northerners. But even on these two criteria, the former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nasir el-Rufai, a member of Obasanjo’s kitchen cabinet is claiming that Yar’Adua has no personal integrity.

But even if we concede on those scores, is it not highly disingenuous for anybody to also suggest that the president “is sufficiently broad minded enough, politically, socially and religiously?” Here was a man, according to El-Rufai, who was very insular as a governor and hadn’t even the telephone numbers of his colleagues. He rarely went to Abuja. It is debatable how many friends Yar’Adua had from the South before he became President. How can such a person be described as being politically and socially broadminded?

The third is even the most laughable. Liberalism must, indeed, have a different meaning for anyone to describe the president as being religiously liberal. He was one of the first Governors to adopt Sharia. It was in his state that a woman was sentenced to death by stoning for allegedly committing adultery when the man who allegedly impregnated her was set free because there was no evidence. What other evidence does anybody need in the circumstance other than the pregnancy? So much for religious broadmindedness!

The fact remains that Obasanjo, just like Babangida and the June 12 saga, has not told the truth as to why he chose an invalid (his words) as successor and by so doing threw Nigeria into avoidable crisis.

But beyond that, I am worried that as another election year approaches, nobody has indicated interest in Yar’Adua’s job. We are all waiting for the Obasanjos and Babangidas of this country and even Yar’Adua in his infirmity to decide for us and we will all fall in line. Some say it is the reality of power and politics in Africa. I say no because we are living witnesses in this same Africa where incumbents or their parties lost power; where incumbents did not and could not have unilaterally decided who would succeed them thereby usurping the power that exclusively belongs to the people.

It is only a reality of power and politics in this country and other failed or failing states in Africa. Unless we say enough is enough now and effectively put an end to the shenanigan of only one man arrogating to himself the power of deciding who becomes the president, we will end up with another Yar’Adua on our hands in 2011.

Talking With The deaf And Dumb

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Published: December 22, 2009

Ikechukwu, you are guilty of using the minority behavior and taste to generalize as basis of rubbishing your country. Is this an enlightened way of arguing? “Five men are caught carrying hard drugs at Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA). They are all men. They are all Igbo. Therefore the Igbo nation is an unserious bunch of cocaine carrying men.” Isn’t that stupid? But that is what you did  in your recent piece.

How many Nigerians travel abroad for medical treatment? How many Nigerians died in 2009? How many of these died abroad? How many births were recorded in 2009? How many of these were born abroad? If as you say in your self-contradiction, American doctors refer cases to India, what is wrong in Nigerians going abroad for cure?

You lie that Nigeria cannot feed itself. We are the world’s largest producer of cassava. We export the stuff. The Nigerian breweries now get their malt from corn grown in Nigeria. And we still have enough left to export. Travel to the middle-belt and see mountains of yam! Go to Tiga in Kano and see hills of tomatoes. I saw heaps of rice in Abakaliki and forgot that I was in Nigeria.

Things are changing, my friend. If Nigeria closes her borders for four days at least three countries will have food riots. Things are not excellent. We can make do with better electricity and fuel supply. But things are not as hopeless as you paint them to be. And please, stop using the crime of the few as the identity of Nigeria. Be a bit more balanced when writing about your country. These things are now read all over the world.

The above comment is one of the over 70 reactions I received last week through text messages, emails and phone calls on my article, “What An Unserious Country.”  Incidentally, it was the only one that disagreed with me. The man who sent the message signed off without writing his name. But the inherent optimism in his rebuttal made an impact. I wanted to know how he sees the silver lining where others see gloom. It would have been different if it was a Dora Akunyili, Minister of Information and Communication, standing on her rebranding dais to preach patriotism to the masses or any other government official defending the status quo.

But here is a private citizen who thinks Nigeria is making progress; that the country is on the right track. I wanted to pick his brain. Who knows? Perhaps, some of us who think that Nigeria has taken a wrong turn could, indeed, be the problem of the country. I called him. A pleasant fellow he turned out to be.

But he thinks Nigerian journalists are anarchists, an unpatriotic bunch of people who delight in messing up their country. He agrees that we have challenges but argues that the way we write about it can only harden the leaders to damn all of us. At this point, I wanted to know if the problem is actually with the way we write about the crisis of governance facing the country or that we are creating the crisis where indeed there is none. He wasn’t quite sure.

If Nigeria produces as much food as he claims, how come we spend so much annually on food importation? He said it is a problem of the elite. While the hoi polloi eat Abakaliki rice, he says, the elite eat imported rice from Asia and other parts of the world.

I disagreed even as I insisted that either he did not read my article well or deliberately misinterpreted it. For instance, I didn’t generalize. I was writing about the habits of the elite. When I talked about those who treat catarrh in Europe and those who take delight in being brought back as body bags to the country rather than fixing hospitals in the country, I was not talking about the long suffering masses of the country.  

I wrote, “Today, there is a new fad. When someone announces that his relation is dead, the question that follows is where? If it is not in the U.S., Europe, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, then the dead must be a “wretched of the earth.” Take a mental picture of all Nigerian leaders that died in the past ten years and count how many of them died in Nigerian hospitals.

 “The way we are going, I won’t be surprised if the ante is upped tomorrow. The question will go beyond where members of the Nigerian elite class die but where they are buried. They day will come when corpses will be flown from Nigeria to be buried in foreign cemeteries. After all, how many Nigerian “big” men are buried in caskets made in Nigeria?”

How can this be a generalization?

My friend said that if he were to be one of the Nigerian leaders, he would damn us to do our worst after reading the article. If Nigerian writers learn how to plead with their leaders rather than speaking truth to power harshly, without mincing words, we may get them to listen. And I asked him how best does one persuade a rapist to let go his victim? Because that is what our so-called leaders are doing. They are raping the country unabashedly. How do you preach to a man who has no conscience?

I was accused of self-contradiction because I see nothing wrong in American doctors referring cases to India when I see everything wrong in Nigerians going abroad for cure? Again, this is being clever by half because the difference between the two is clear. While the former (American doctors referring cases to India) is an exception, in Nigeria it is the golden rule of the rich – “though shall not attend a Nigerian hospital.” The issue of referrals is not even there.

Perhaps, here is the only country where the leaders don’t see the health of the President as a national security issue. Even enlightened self-interest would have convinced President Umaru Yar’Adua, a man with health challenges to build a world-class hospital and persuade Nigerian doctors all over the world to come home and manage it. Cuba’s former leader, Fidel Castro, has been ill for more than two years, during which time, he has undergone very complex and complicated medical treatment. His condition was so serious that American Intelligence once predicted that he was going to die within one year. But he is still alive courtesy of Cuban hospitals and doctors.

The problem is that we no longer have the capacity to be ashamed. If a country, one of the largest producers of crude oil in the world delights in importing refined petroleum products from countries that have no crude oil, what else can’t we do?

And there is no nice way of rousing an inebriated man from his stupor.  Nigerian leaders are in a state of inebriation. They are drunk. And it is our patriotic duty to insist that they stop pushing the country to the precipice. I wish there could be a nice way of doing just that. I can’t see any.    

Why Is Positive Change Difficult In Nigeria?

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Published: Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Is Nigeria jinxed? Are we doomed to failure? Why is it that the more things change in Nigeria, the more they remain, at best, the same? When they really change, it is, almost always, for the worse? In other countries things change for the better. In fact, the idea of change presupposes a movement from bad to good. Change connotes positivism. Why is it that when other countries are making progress, no-matter how slowly, we are, at best, running around in circles? In everything we do, we take one step forward and three steps backwards.

Take the issue of democracy for instance. Other countries, even those with worse socio-economic and political background than ours, are making a huge success of it. Our contemporaries are riding high but here we are making a mess of the very fundamentals of democracy. We are busy dismantling the very foundation of a robust democratic enterprise when others are busy adding bricks and mortar, thereby fortifying and consolidating their own democratic edifice.  

Part of the problem is that rather than building institutions, we elevate fellow human beings to the status of gods. With time they become the state writ-large and when state policies are driven by elephantine ego, vendetta becomes the oil that greases policy making wheel. The end result is ruin.

That explains why Nigeria is lying prostrate today when other countries are making progress, no matter how modest.  We all agreed that military rule ruined the country and clamoured for change. Democracy, we said, will halt the rot in the system and quicken the turnaround process for good. It is working in other countries, so it should work in Nigeria.

The change came in 1999 when General Olusegun Obasanjo mounted the saddle. Eight years after, rather than lifting Nigeria from the rancid depths it sunk under the military, he left the country in further ruins.

Again, Nigerians went on their knees and prayed fervently for positive change in 2007. Of course, change came again. Obasanjo was disgraced out of office, having failed in his life presidency plot. But, as usual, the change was not positive. If anything, we changed for the worse. In 1999, we had a man who had the capacity and clout to be President. If he had used this capacity for good, Nigeria would have made that giant leap it so desperately needed. But he chose to use his capacity for evil; the height of which was the deliberate foisting of a man who has neither capacity nor clout on us as his successor. Today, Nigeria has become the butt of all international jokes.

Because Obasanjo wanted to personalize power, he refused to build institutions that will sustain the democratic project. He was the Nigerian state, or so he thought. Because he wanted to continue ruling from Ota farm, he invidiously manipulated the political process to serve his own selfish interest. He was playing God and strutting the land, daring any mortal to challenge him. But he was no God and cannot be. So, his plans went awry. His Man Friday, President Yar’Adua, somewhere along the line got hijacked by his arch-political enemies who also succeeded in supplanting the minion he planted in the House of Representatives as Speaker – Mrs. Patricia Etteh. So, the former President lost the Presidency and the lower chamber of the National Assembly. The result of Obasanjo’s perfidious power game is the political paroxysm Nigeria has been thrown into.

Today, almost two months after Yar’Adua left the seat of power to tend to his health, Nigeria has no President, either substantial or acting. Today, the fear of an Obasanjo comeback is the only reason why the Presidency is in the limbo. It is the reason why some people are ready to subvert the Constitution if only to ensure that Jonathan, who they fear will go to Ota to get permission even to sleep in his bedroom if power is handed over to him, is not sworn in as acting President. Sadly, Nigeria is the worse for it.

On the economic front, we are not faring better. When a frightening financial crisis threw the world economy into a recession two years ago, leaders showed their mettle. Today, many countries are out of recession. Some are already on the path of growth once again.

Not Nigeria! First we said our mono economy, which is dependent on the export of crude oil, the price of which we don’t control, is immune to the global economic crisis.

Sensing danger, Nigerians again clamoured for change in the leadership of the financial sector and got not only a new Finance Minister, Mansur Muhtar, but also a new Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Lamido Sanusi .

The new CBN boss made the right noises and Nigerians ululated. During his screening by the Senate, he advised the man who appointed him to reduce his unwieldy seven point agenda. Nigerians hailed him as a man of courage. Last August, he wielded the big stick and some banks chiefs, those fat cows that behaved as if they owned Nigeria because they bandied together in a mischievous organization called Corporate Nigeria which provided the slush funds which Obasanjo used in ruining Nigeria, lost their jobs. Many clapped, thinking that the man had a roadmap, a solution.

But several months after the tsunami, Sanusi seems to have come to a dead end in his reform agenda, leaving the industry in more ruins than he met it. Is all there is to Sanusi’s banking reforms the sack of “rogue managing directors?” That in itself would have been comforting if not for the report that those who replaced them are committing exactly the same crime.

Today, the industry is on edge. The sector which used to be one of the highest employers of labour is retrenching staff at a rate that has even alarmed the Federal Government.  Insiders claim that the mass sack is at the behest of Sanusi. They insist that a CBN directive to the MD/CEO of Intercontinental Bank Plc in a letter dated October 28, 2009, to immediately reduce executive and other staff emoluments by at least 30 percent and submit an action plan for staff rationalization has resulted in monumental job losses, thereby adding to the country’s bourgeoning unemployment problem.

The remaining staff are under immense pressure to pull in substantial fresh deposits into the same banks Sanusi told the whole world are on the verge of collapse thereby effectively eroding confidence. Since Sanusi’s tsunami, credit has become a taboo, in any case, banks are no longer lending. How can such an economy grow?

And what does Sanusi say to all these scary developments? Nigeria’s economy is doing quite well, he pontificates. Penultimate week, he said not even the worrisome absence of Yar’Adua is impacting negatively on the economy. “The economy grew in the last quarter by over seven percent. Over the year, it has grown by 6.9 percent.” And you wonder, which economy? Explaining why Yar’Adua’s presence is inconsequential to the economy, he said; “It is a system that works. There is a cabinet. You get the government agencies working and the individuals in the private sector working. We pray that Yar’Adua gets well, but, on our part, we have not felt any vacuum. Vice President Goodluck Jonathan is in charge,” he stressed. And you wonder which system he is talking about. If Nigeria can run seamlessly without Yar’Adua on the saddle, why then did we bother to elect a President?

And last week, the man had the effrontery to tell us that his opponents had voted N300 million to sponsor a sustained media war against him without also saying how much he voted to sustain all the positive stories the media wrote on him and his reform agenda when they thought he was an agent of positive change.

Truth be told, the banking reform which Sanusi initiated is unraveling and it is only fair that questions are asked. Is Sanusi still the agent of positive change we all thought he was? And this question can only be answered by determining where the change he promised has left the economy – better or worse shape.

Can Anything Good Come Out Of Abdulmutallab’s Misadventure?

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Published: January 12, 2010

After blowing hot air last week by issuing a preposterous ultimatum to Americans, Senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria led by General David Mark made a u-turn on Sunday by walking away from the ultimatum. True to character, they denied threatening the U.S. with a diplomatic row should they refuse delisting Nigeria from their terror list.

 As usual, the Senate spokesman, Ayogu Eze, blamed “bloody journalists” for allegedly misrepresenting him. How? He couldn’t say. He lied that he never issued an ultimatum even when he claimed last Tuesday that he was pontificating on Mark’s authority. But what he could not tell Nigerians on Sunday was that the u-turn was as a result of America’s threat to revoke the visas of Nigerian lawmakers and top government officials.

When they resume today after their Christmas and New Year break, they will be on all fours, pleading that they be allowed to crawl to America even if they will be stripped naked before boarding the flight. That is the caliber of people that call themselves leaders in Nigeria; always putting self-interest before national interest.

But America’s threat of visa revocation which has exposed the soft belly of the “big men” in Abuja got me thinking.

Can anything good come out of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s misguided action? This is the question that has concentrated my mind since last week. Before attempting to answer the question, let us put the issues in perspective.

On December 25, 2009 (Christmas Day), the first Nigerian suicide (underwear) bomber attempted to blow up an American Airliner, Northwest Airlines, which took off from the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam with 273 passengers and 11 crew members as it was descending into Detroit Airport in the state of Michigan.

Penultimate Monday, the U.S. included Nigeria in a list of “countries of interest” whose citizens would face thorough screening before entering their country. It is interesting to note that that list includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria, officially designated “state sponsors of terrorism,” and nine others – Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria, Pakistan, Libya and Somalia. The implication of this is that Nigerians would henceforth be subjected to very demeaning security checks at various airports including full body scanning, pat-downs, carry-on bag searches, restriction on the use of electronic equipment such as iPods, laptops, etc., and restricted movement one hour to landing.

Understandably, there is outrage in the country. Many well-meaning Nigerians have argued that the U.S. action is hasty given the facts of the matter already in the public domain. Farouk’s plot was an evil one, no doubt. If not for providence and mother luck, he would have, in cold blood, wasted the lives of innocent people that may have included Nigerians. It was not an act of suicide as someone suggested recently; it would have been mass murder, a deliberate act of terrorism which is condemnable.

Was Farouk misguided in his action? Yes! But that should be little comfort to us. When a Taliban operative in Afghanistan kills a U.S. or Afghan soldier in Kandahar, for instance, it is expected. They are in a state of war. But when an Angolan separatist group opens fire on a Togolese team that is in their country to participate in the African Cup of Nations, it is a despicable act of terrorism which cannot be rationalized.

But Farouk’s action does not make Nigeria a terrorist state. Though investigations are still ongoing, he has not, so far, been linked to anybody or group of people in Nigeria. He has no collaborators in the country. If anything, evidence so far suggests that he was recruited by al-Qaeda while he was a student in London. At least, that much has been said by Yemen, the Arab nation where his terrorist skills were hone. “The information provided to us is that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab joined al-Qaeda in London,” Rshad al-Alimi, Yemen’s Deputy Prime Minister for Defence and Security said last Thursday. He even admitted that the suspect’s alleged meeting with the American Moslem cleric of Yemeni descent, Anwar al-Awlaki, during his time in Yemen studying Arabic, may have been the clincher.

So, why did America take such a seemingly precipitate action against Nigeria? If all it takes for a country to become a terrorist state is for a citizen to carry out a terrorist attack, then the U.S. and most of its European allies are terrorist countries. In November last year, Major Nidal Malik Hassan, a U.S. soldier at the Fort Hood base in Texas, who also had dealings with al-Awlaki shot and killed 13 people. Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber, who is serving a life sentence in the U.S. for attempting on December 22, 2001, to bomb an American commercial plane flying from Paris to Miami is a British citizen. His collaborator, Nizar Trabelsi, is a Belgian. Perhaps, America and Britain harbour within their shores men and women sympathetic to the al-Qaeda cause than in the whole of Africa.

But it was apparent in a democracy where power belongs to the people, where a leader ignores public opinion at his own peril, that a leader whose rating has been dropping in opinion polls, and who has been buffeted by the hawks led by former Vice President, Dick Cheney, as not doing enough to protect Americans from the evil machinations of terrorists, cannot but maximize the opportunity given him by the underwear bomber. Put differently, to ward off the huge political backlash Farouk’s action would have had on the Democratic Party, particular with the mid-term elections in view, Obama must be seen to have done something. And if including Nigeria in the terror list will assuage the angst of the American public, so be it.

But the fact that the U.S. could include Nigeria’s name in such infamous list without as much as blinking an eye shows to what extent the country has lost relevance. As Princeton Lyman, former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, noted at the recent Chinua Achebe Colloquium at the Brown University in the U.S., nobody can doubt that Nigeria is fast becoming irrelevant in African and world affairs. “The point is that Nigeria can become much less relevant to the United States. We have already seen evidence of it. When President Obama went to Ghana and not to Nigeria, he was sending a message, that Ghana symbolised more of the significant trends, issues and importance that one wants to put on Africa than Nigeria,” he said.

But who is to be blamed? Diplomacy is all about the active engagement of one country with another. As Todd Moss, Vice President and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Development in Washington DC who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the Bush administration noted last week, the absence of President Umaru Yar’Adua meant there was nobody Obama could engage with diplomatically.

“Normally, after such a horrific incident,” he wrote, “President Obama would be on the phone with his counterpart, discussing what went wrong and agreeing on ways to work better in the future to prevent such attacks. But this couldn’t happen because Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua left his country for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia on November 23^rd and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

In the absence of a President, who is incapacitated and whose ability to continue governing the country is very much in doubt and a Vice President that is obviously overwhelmed by the asphyxiating intrigues in Aso Rock, Nigeria is at the mercy of a ruthless cabal baying for the blood of fellow countrymen.

So, can anything good come out of Farouk Abdulmutallab’s misadventure? Yes! But only if the U.S. will agree to further tighten its diplomatic screw on Nigerian leaders. If Americans refuse to issue students visa to the children of those who are stealing our patrimony to send their children abroad to acquire the best of education, who knows, they may decide to revamp education at home. If Americans deny visa to our leaders seeking medical help abroad, and also get their European friends to do the same, they may decide to strengthen health institutions at home. If the U.S. decides to confiscate property of our leaders in the fight against terrorism, who knows, they may decide to steal less knowing that the looted funds won’t be safe anywhere.

Before We Waste Another Decade

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Published: January 5, 2010

Five days ago, Nigerians, with the rest of humanity, bid farewell to 2009 and the first decade of the 21^st Century, while ushering in a New Year and a new decade.

How time flies! Few years ago, the world came to a stop, literally, as we awaited the dawn of a new Millennium. A people that revel in empty clichés, there was so much hoopla in the country. Year 2000, we were told, would be a magic one. It was a year our leaders promised that education, health and even wealth would be for all. They sedated us with enchanting rhetoric. It was as if the year would never come. But come, it did and none of the promises were kept. They were not kept because while we were busy mouthing meaningless slogans, erecting billboards and setting up millennium committees that were used in siphoning funds, other nations were busy executing projects. As the saying goes, we did not walk the talk and the dawn of a new millennium, not surprisingly, wrong-footed us.

Nonetheless, we were able to transit from a debilitating era of military regimes to democracy in 1999. That was a silver lining in the country’s hitherto darkened firmament which rekindled hope.  The presidency of General Olusegun Obasanjo held so much promise at inception. Coming on the eve of the new century, there was very high optimism that what we missed in those years that the rampaging locusts ate, we will recoup in the new decade.

Despite the steep and precipitous rise in the activities of terrorists, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which made the world very unsafe, and the financial crisis that almost submerged the global economy, the last decade still remains the period when most countries of the world created the most wealth for their people.

Surprisingly, Nigeria fell off the development radar even when we had a president that had the capacity to govern. And it is not difficult to fathom why. Obasanjo placed self-interest above national interest. He could not rise above his biases, prejudices, petty jealousies and greed. Nigeria was the worst for it. Even the globally acclaimed anti-graft war which many thought would be used in putting kleptomaniacs on the leash, thus freeing funds for development purposes, he personally derailed it when it became a tool to further his ambition to rule Nigeria in perpetuity.

The result was that in eight years, the President squandered the promise of the decade at the altar of his tomfoolery. Obasanjo capped this eight years of monkey business with the supreme mischief of deliberately foisting a man that had absolutely no capacity to govern on the nation as President. That is the height of waywardness and ingratitude to a country that not only believed so much in him, but indeed has done so much for him.

So, why did Obasanjo settle on Umaru Yar’Adua as his successor even when he (Yar’Adua) came last (garnering only two votes) in a poll by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)Governors to choose from among themselves the person who will succeed him? If the idea was to ensure that power moves back to the North, why did Obasanjo ignore Ahmed Makarfi, former Governor of Kaduna State, who is now a Senator, that garnered 14 votes in an election where Dr. Peter Odili, former Governor of Rivers State got eight votes? Can Obasanjo claim he was altruistic in making his decision or was it a decision informed by his inordinate ambition to continue ruling by proxy from his Ota Farms?

It was obvious right from the beginning that the Yar’Adua presidency would be a disaster. It was an accident waiting to happen. Almost three years after, I am not sure if anybody is still in doubt that Obasanjo cruelly shortchanged Nigerians. It is also obvious that the 17 months left of his presidency cannot be better. We can only pray that it does not get worse.

But dwelling on the Yar’Adua presidency is tantamount to crying over spilt milk. An exercise in futility! Our major concern now should be how to ensure that we don’t waste this decade the same way we wasted the last one.

The elections in 2011 hold the key because getting the right leadership is the solution to Nigeria’s crisis of underdevelopment. For too long, Nigerians have been alienated from the process through which their leaders are recruited. They have been reduced to spectators by those who claim it is their right to choose leaders for us. In 1999, Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar decided that Obasanjo would be Nigeria’s President. Having so decided, the election became a mere formality, a fait accompli. In 2007, it was Obasanjo’s turn to decide that Yar’Adua must be president. Whatever the rest of the 140 million Nigerians thought was immaterial. The implication is that we have wittingly or otherwise created a dubious system where leaders who claim to be servants of the people, indeed, owe their allegiance not to the same people from whom power ought to flow in a democracy but a cabal.

Now, leadership, to borrow a cliché, is not rocket science. Even if it were, Nigeria has some of the best brains the world can boast of. The missing link is that we have as leaders men and women who don’t believe in the Nigerian dream, people whose commitment to the Nigerian project is at best suspect.

It is this dubious recruitment process that makes it expedient for leaders to fritter away our patrimony on political patronage rather than build roads, hospitals and schools or do anything that will benefit the people. That is why every year billions of Naira are voted for projects, money released from the treasury but the jobs won’t be done and nobody will ask questions.

If Nigeria must make progress this decade, we must have leaders who are prepared to subsume their individual interests in the overall national interest. We must have as leaders people imbued with the spirit of patriotism. This is where the followers come in.

Granted, we have been failed over and over again by the leadership but it is also because the followers have been docile, if not idiotic, in their engagement with the state and the ruling elite. Allowing a Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for instance, to single-handedly choose all those that will contest elections in Lagos will only produce leaders who owe their allegiance, not to Lagosians but to him; even if the 2011 elections are free and fair. If we allow a foxy Babangida or a scheming Obasanjo to decide again who becomes President, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ministers, etc., as it happened in 1999 and 2007, we will only get leaders who catch cold when their benefactors, not Nigerians, sneeze. We will continue to have contracts awarded for railways without rail lines; we will continue to have trillions of Naira budgeted for power, only to end up importing more generators. We will continue to vote billions of Naira for our hospitals but end up acquiring more air ambulances that can ferret the rich to foreign hospitals. We will continue to vote billions of Naira for roads but end up acquiring more private jets that will fly the rich from one part of the country to the other so as to avoid the death traps called Nigerian roads.

Unless Nigerian leaders become accountable to the people; until our leaders start looking up to the people as the source of their power, aware that the only sure ticket to public office or a second term in office is the approval and consent of the electorate, we will never have responsible and responsive governments. Without responsible and responsive governments, we may well kiss goodbye to this decade even before the journey is started.

It is therefore up to the people, victims of the near total collapse of governance, to, henceforth, take their destiny in their own hands by asserting themselves in order to shake off the yoke of bad governance.

2011: Neither Yar’Adua Nor Atiku

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Published: January 27, 2009

Several months ago, my hardworking correspondent in Adamawa State, Sule Lazarus, wrote a story that former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who had just returned to the country after a long stay outside was consulting with his political associates in his state, sounding them out on the possibility of returning to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the party he helped midwife but from which he was pushed out in 2007. I have always had absolute confidence in Sule, yet the story looked implausible and far-fetched.

My dilemma was compounded by the fact that none of those who were said to have attended the meeting and who spoke to Sule agreed to be quoted. I called somebody who is sufficiently close to Atiku and who should know if such a meeting or consultations took place. I have had a longstanding relationship with my source, a relationship predicated on my mutual respect and trust. In the past, he never failed to confirm any story. If it is a sensitive story that he was not expected to talk to the media, he will plead anonymity. In this case, he said he was not aware of such meeting although he admitted he was not with the former Vice President in Yola. I made two other calls, drew blank, and decided to drop the story. The golden rule in this profession is, “If you are in doubt, leave out.”

The story sounded incredible because it was hard to imagine an Atiku Abubakar going back to a party that disgraced him. How could he associate politically with men and women who were prepared to send him to jail, people who denied him the opportunity his exercise his franchise, his inalienable right to stand for election. Moreover, Atiku won the 2007 Presidential election and would have been Nigeria’s President today if not for the PDP that rigged him out with the active collaboration of the Professor Maurice Iwu-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

So, if he was able to win the presidency on the platform of the Action Congress (AC), in so short a time, in spite of all the hassles he was deliberately subjected to, and despite Obasanjo’s shenanigans, why bother going back to the PDP, a party he can conveniently do without, a party that has become inconsequential to his political future?

Besides, can he afford to leave in the political lurch all those who believed that he was grossly maltreated in the PDP and who fought gallantly to redress the injustice and who, when they failed, not only followed him to the AC, but ensured that he emerged, unopposed, the presidential candidate of the fledgling party? What of all the vows publicly made by Atiku without any prompting that umbilical cord that joined him with PDP was permanently cut? What of his vow never to have anything to do again with his former boss, Olusegun Obasanjo? Such a move by a man described by his numerous admirers as a consummate politician was, simply, imponderable.

But how naïve I was. I failed to reckon with the enduring and legendary capacity of the average Nigerian politician to lick his vomit if that will advance his political cause. Subsequent events since I threw away Sule’s super exclusive have shown that Atiku is not only desirous and scheming to go back to the PDP but is also prepared to do anything possible, including walking on all fours to Obasanjo, to make that happen.

And that was exactly what he did penultimate Monday when he made a surprise visit to Obasanjo at his Abeokuta mansion. Asked if the visit signals reconciliation, Atiku explained that there was no “personal animosity between me and the former president. We had political disagreement which could even happen between a father and son.” Two days later, the Atiku Political Organisation, whose members were no doubt surprised by their promoter’s political move, rushed out a statement explaining that the fear that unresolved “political feuds and petty elite bickering” will continue to undermine the country’s political and economic progress led both men to resolve to work with other patriots and statesmen to address critical national challenges.

“The meeting was not about the 2011 presidential election as some people have misinterpreted it. The two leaders decided to bury the hatchet and focus their attention, redirect their energies and harness their collective experiences for the benefit of the country

“It was not about the two of them. It is about the future of our beloved country. At a critical moment, such as this, in the life of a nation, great men and women must put aside political differences and work for the progress of the country of the country. This is the context in which the Abeokuta meeting should be seen by all well-meaning Nigerians,” the statement read in part.

So, national interest rather than personal political gains brought the two together? So, their coming together is about our welfare? What a patriotic duo. Ordinarily, Nigerians should count themselves blessed for having such selfless leaders. Except that the two self-sacrificing and altruistic men had eight years to do what they are claiming to be doing now and frittered the opportunity on the altar of debauchery and deceit. Or could it be that Nigeria is at a much more critical moment now than it was in 1998/99 when the two were given the ultimate powers in the land to pull back the country from the precipice and put it on the track greatness?

No Nigerian should make any mistake about what is happening now. Atiku is no fool. He knows quite well that the enormous goodwill he seemed to have garnered in the last two years of their presidency was more a rejection of Obasanjo than an endorsement of his leadership capabilities by Nigerians. Nigerians, having found themselves sandwiched between the axiomatic deep blue sea and the devil between 2006 and 2007 saw in Atiku’s predicament in the government and party he helped build an ally, a veritable rallying in their determined opposition against Obasanjo’s inordinate ambition to rule Nigeria in perpetuity.

Atiku played his new found role well, not because of any principles but because he knew that Obasanjo’s inordinate quest cannot be anything other than the cemetery of his own ambition of becoming Nigeria’s President. So, it was a situation of his struggles for personal interest finding a meeting ground with the overwhelming aspiration of Nigerians to see to the end of and administration that became a curse rather than a blessing. The romance was good while it lasted, but it was not bound to last forever because such a marriage of convenience is bound to disintegrate once the common enemy is out of the way. 

What is happening now is that Atiku has not buried his ambition to be president of Nigeria, an ambition which I must confess is legitimate and I have nothing against. And because he is no fool, he knows that Nigerians cannot, in good conscience, elect him in a free and fair election. To achieve his ambition, therefore, he has to fall back on the PDP rigging machine, a machine he knows so well because he was in the saddle both in 1999 and 2003, to capture Nigeria in 2011. How can he do this without crawling back to the “owners” of the party, the same people who disgraced him and called him a thief at every local and international fora?

But it is not in Obasanjo’s character to forgive and forget past hurts. And Atiku hurt him pretty good and despite being stopped from becoming President, Atiku can be said to have won the battle of supremacy between him and Obasanjo in 2007. In which case, if Obasanjo were to live to his vengeful reputation, he may be deliberately baiting Atiku so as to finally deliver the sucker punch.

But even if this reconciliation move is genuine, it cannot be because Obasanjo has suddenly fallen in love with Atiku again. He hasn’t that capacity. It could be that just as it happened between Atiku and Nigerians in 2007, both Obasanjo and Atiku have now found a new political enemy in the incumbent President, Umaru Yar’Adua and are prepared to bury their very deep political difference in order to deal with him. Atiku still sees Yar’Adua as a usurper, a man who is reaping where he did not sow.  Obasanjo has every reason to feel betrayed by Yar’Adua by some of the actions he has taken in the past 20 months. Both would like to teach the man from Katsina, who in spite of his eight years as governor, they still see as a political upstart, the political lesson of his life.

But they will see their match in the President, not because of Yar’Adua per se, but because the hawks around Yar’Adua, who believe that this is their turn to milk the cow called Nigeria are bracing up for a fight.

So, where do all these intrigues leave Nigeria and Nigerians? In the cesspit where they have always been.

The world is in economic dire economic stress. Those who hitherto worshiped at the shrine of private sector have realized that an unregulated private sector is ultimately a recipe for economic burst. It does not matter how long the boom lasted. And gradually, government is stepping in to take charge of the economy. To ensure that governments perform this role, countries are ensuring that their best and brightest sons and daughters are elected into government.

In Nigeria, we are working hard to ensure that our worst take charge of the commanding heights of government. May God save us.